"100 greedy, heartless, rational pirates are ranked by seniority, 1 through 100. They decide to split a horde of treasure by series of votes. Each time they vote, if 50% or more agree to split the treasure equally, they do so. Otherwise, they kill off the lowest ranking pirate and repeat. How many pirates die before the split is agreed upon?" This is an excellent example of an inductive-reasoning problem. Starting with a pirate and going up is definitely the way to go.